


Don't Look Back

by seekerluna



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Crazy uncle Coran, F/M, Galra Keith (Voltron), Genderfluid Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, M/M, Protective Lance, Protective lions, Slow Burn, they/them pronouns for Pidge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-08-24 09:12:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8366641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekerluna/pseuds/seekerluna
Summary: It had to be a joke.Purple was starting to cover him and Keith could only think that it was some sick joke. Until things become very real, very fast.





	1. Chapter 1

It had to be a joke.

It was the only thing running through Keith’s mind when he awoke to find purple blotches on his arms and legs. He thought at first that it was paint or some kind of alien marker that Lance had found and had come into his room during the night to color on Keith for some sort of prank. 

But it didn’t come off, even after spending what seemed to Keith like an hour in the shower.

He was honestly pretty freaked out at the moment. He was turning purple! Why was he turning purple?!

“Keith, buddy, you up? Because if you’re still sleeping you better get up. Shiro wants us in the training room like now dude, and I don’t feel like pissing space dad off.” Why did Lance have to show up now of all times?

“Yes, I’m up, I’ll be there in a few,” Keith responded, squashing down the panic rising in his chest. His flight suit and normal wear would hide the purple, thankfully, he just hoped it wasn’t going to spread or anything. He just wanted it to go away, whatever it was.

“Well, you better hurry. You missed breakfast already and that’s pretty unusual for you.” Lance commented, Keith almost able to imagine him shrugging from behind the door. The red Paladin listened for Lance’s retreating footsteps before letting out a slow breath, steeling himself for the training session that Shiro and Allura were going to put them through. He couldn’t focus on the purple patches, he was sure they weren’t anything to worry about. Probably just some deep bruising from a run in with the Galra in their last battle. Yeah, that was it, just some deep bruising.

~x~x~x~

“That’s some gnarly bruising on your arm, man.” Hunk poked Keith’s exposed forearm when he noticed the purple splotch visible just above the other Paladin’s wrist. “The heck did you do to yourself?”

Keith snatched his arm back, tugging the sleeve of his jacket down to cover it, wincing the smallest bit. Hunk, taking it as a sign that the bruise hurt quite a bit, apologized immediately.

“Could have happened during training or that last encounter with the Druids,” He grunted out softly.

“Maybe you need to take a few ticks in the healing pod.” The suggestion wasn’t heavy but it was there.

“Probably,” Keith responded, rubbing at his arm distractedly. It wasn’t a bad idea if he was being honest with himself, maybe it would heal whatever it was that was happening to him. “Actually, I might just do that.” Keith stood from the couch they’d been lounging on, ignoring the curious looks from Lance and Pidge as he made his way out of the room. 

So deep in his thoughts was he that he barely heard Shiro’s greeting as he passed the older man, completely missing the strange look he was given after he was around the corner and out of sight. Heading up to the medical wing, Keith changed out of his flight suit along the way, cringing and swallowing down panic when he saw that the blotches of purple had in fact begun to spread up his arms and across the rest of his body. Taking a few steady breaths, he managed to get himself to the medical wing before he realized he wouldn’t be able to start up any of the pods on his own without Allura or Coran there; they really needed to get some lessons in reading Altean.

“Keith? What’re you doing up here? I thought you were spending down time with your teammates!” Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Keith turned to look at Coran, putting on his usual mask to hide his growing anxiety over this new issue.

“I got some nasty bruising from our last fight,” Keith explained. “Deep bruising, I figure a few ticks in the healing pods would do me some good, can’t have any of us not in fighting condition the next time a Galra ship shows up.”

“Right you are, Keith!” Coran was already tapping away, getting a healing pod up and ready for the red Paladin. “I’m glad you decide to take care of it now instead of letting it get worse.”

“Yeah..” He looked down and away, glad Coran couldn’t see his face at the moment. 

Once the healing pod was ready, Keith stepped inside, closing his eyes, focusing simply on breathing as the lid closed around him, sealing him inside. It wasn’t long before he slipped into unconsciousness, letting the pod do its work, healing whatever could be found wrong on his body.

Keith wasn’t sure how long he was actually in there, only that when he finally emerged, most of the castle was dark, only a few dim lights on to help him see. It was with shaking hands that he tugged at the sleeves of his jacket, heart hammering in his chest as he prepared for the worst. 

“Fuck..!” He swore, staring wide eyed at the purple that colored his arms, the patches seemingly having grown during his time in the pod. Why hadn’t it been fixed? What in the name of the Lions was going on? Had.. had the Druids cursed him? “Calm down, Keith, it.. It’s probably nothing.” He tried reasoning with himself, his mind going wild with theories and possibilities. Keith heard and felt a purr at the back of his mind, the sound concerned and reassuring as his Lion reached through their bond. “Red, I dunno what’s happening to me.” He muttered aloud instead of sending his thoughts to the Lion. “What if something is seriously wrong with me? What if I-” He choked on the last bit of his sentence, unable to bring himself to actually say it. He felt his Lion give another rumble, as though trying to tell him everything would be okay, urging him to go and get some rest instead of over-thinking everything.

It was with some reluctance that he heeded his Lion’s advice and trudged back up to his quarters, scowling when he heard Pidge, Hunk, and Lance arguing loudly just down the hall. What the Quiznak were they doing up at whatever hour this was? And what could they possibly be arguing about? Keith ignored it though as he entered his room, shucking off his clothes to change into a tank and some pajama pants. Upside to traveling to worlds and saving them from Galra control: all the free clothing they could ever need and discounted items.

“It’ll be better in the morning.” He told himself firmly, wanting to badly to just believe his own words. 

~x~x~x~

“Keith? Keith, what was that scream? What’s going on in there?!” Hunk was clearly concerned and nearly ready to ram the door down should Keith fail to answer much longer. The entirety of team Voltron, save Lance (who was surely fast asleep with headphones on again) had been awoken by a loud cry and a crash from Keith’s quarters, putting everyone on high alert instantly.

“I’m fine!” Keith tried to keep the snarl from his voice as he finally called back, eyes that couldn’t possibly be his locked firmly on the shattered mirror in front of him. “I’m fine, just give me a few minutes.”

That seemed to settle some of their nerves as the group slowly dispersed from outside his room, too awake now to go back to sleep but too anxious to do anything other than sit around and wait for Keith.

Keith stared at his reflection, not me, his mind supplied, in undisguised horror. During the course of the night, the purple had progressed to cover his entire body, a fine coating of fur now covering him from head to toe. Large ears that looked like a cross between a feline and a bat now sat twitching rapidly on his head, picking up every little sound inside the room, including his own rapid breathing. He could see that his teeth had changed as well, his canines having grown into sharp points, which had cut into his lip earlier when he’d awoken. His eyes though, eyes like that of their enemy, stared back at him, wide and yellow, pupil less but still able to express the horror at his sudden inexplicable change.

He was a Galra.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm scared."

Keith couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the mirror. Yet, the person staring back at him was most definitely him, just with a Galran body.

 

“ _Fuck_!” He swore, gripping the edge of the sink so hard that he was certain his claws would crack the hard enamel of it. “Breathe, Keith, breathe. There has to be a way to reverse this.”

 

Looking up again, he glared at his own reflection, disgusted by it, terrified even, and shut his eyes tightly, repeating over and over that this was a nightmare. Maybe if he focused on his human body he would just… change. It was worth a shot, there was no way he could face the rest of the team looking as he did now. Hunk and Lance would probably freak out, Pidge was likely to shock him with their bayard, and Shiro… God, Shiro was likely to fall back into a traumatic episode and attack him without question if he saw Keith as a Galra. He couldn’t put the team through that, he’d sooner run away than face them in this form.

 

_Human. I’m a human. I’m not a monster._

 

Keith focused on bringing up a mental image of himself as he appeared as a human, starting with his hands and working his way to the rest of his body. He evened out his breathing as he continued to focus, a few times pausing to wonder if it was working or if it was just in vain. It was a while before he dared crack an eye open, hesitant and sick to his stomach at the thought of what he might still see.

 

“Oh thank god,” He let his breath out in a heavy sigh of relief. It appeared that he’d somehow been able to reverse whatever it was and return to his human form, though now he couldn’t help wondering if what he’d seen was merely some sort of hallucination. Perhaps caused by being thrown out from that wormhole? Some of the others had been reporting weird dreams since they’d reunited after being separated.

 

Yeah, that was it, a hallucination. It was all just a trick of his mind. And yet, something told him that this experience had been very, very real.

 

Red purred at the back of his mind again, nudging him, asking what was going on. Keith assured her that everything was fine, that he would come visit her in the hanger later on after he’d eaten. Honestly, he just wanted to avoid the team but he knew that was an impossibility, which was surprising given how large the Castle of Lions truly was.

 

“Are you just getting up?” Was what greeted him the moment he stepped out of his door, jumping about a foot in the air from the suddenness of it. His hackles raised, Keith leveled a bright eyed and bushy tailed Lance with a glare that would surely have most other people cowering. Except, Lance wasn’t most people. “Someone’s a little jumpy this morning. Is it actually morning? I can’t even tell anymore.”

 

“Whenever we wake up is morning as far as I’m concerned,” Keith snorted, turning on his heel sharply to start heading for the kitchen for breakfast; he was starting to get used to the food goo, even though Hunk had managed to procure them some actual solid food from one of the last planets they’d liberated from Zarkon’s control.

 

“You seem more surly than normal,” Lance kept pace with him, which wasn’t hard given that the Cuban was a good few inches taller than Keith. “Whats up? Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

 

You have no idea, is what Keith wanted to say, “What’s it to you?” Is what he said instead.

 

Lance squinted at him, his face far too close to Keith’s at the moment, so close in fact that Keith could see he’d recently exfoliated and moisturized his skin. Wait, why was that the first thing he noticed?

 

“Nah, it’s you,” Lance seemed to finally decide. “Race you to the kitchen. Eat my dust, Kogane!” With that, Lance was off sprinting in those ridiculous blue lion slippers that he owned.

 

“Seriously, McClain?” Keith raised a brow and bolted right after him, his boots able to gain far more traction than Lance’s slippers. “Loser has to polish the winners Lion after the next mission!” For the time being, this gave Keith a distraction from his troubles, and he was insanely thankful for Lance’s obnoxious personality for once.

 

The pair got disapproving looks from Allura when they went tumbling into the kitchen, literally tripping over one another in their attempt at being the first one there. Hunk and Pidge shook their heads, though they were damn sure Pidge was recording the whole thing via their new robotic buddy Booper. Shiro was trying his damn hardest not to look amused and was failing quite badly, a smile tugging at his lips as he shook his head.

 

“I’m glad you boys are so lively this morning!” Coran was already putting out two plates of goo for them, mustache twitching in poorly hidden amusement. “I hope you’ll put that energy to good use during your morning exercises.”

 

“Seriously, Coran, training exercises first thing in the morning?” Lance complained as he untangled himself from Keith and trudged to the table to dig into his goo. Keith wasn’t far behind, lagging just a little as he let Coran’s words settle, panic slowly clawing its way up his throat again.

 

Shiro must have recognized Keith’s moment of hesitation for what it was and got up, laying a hand on his shoulder, watching as the boy he’d come to accept as a brother snap out of whatever trance he was in.

 

“If there’s anything bothering you, you know you can talk to me.” Shiro murmured quiet enough for only Keith to hear him.

 

“I’m fine, Shiro,” Keith shrugged his hand off, putting on his brooding teen act as he sat down and dug into the bland goo. This of course got a sigh from the other man before Shiro disappeared to join Allura in the control room.

 

The Paladin’s ate in relative silence, only broken by Lance’s obnoxious comments and jokes aimed at Pidge and Hunk, a few jabs being thrown Keith’s way though they were firmly ignored, much to Lance’s chagrin. Once they were finished eating, Coran ushered them all off so they could change and head down to the training room, heading off ahead of them to set up for the morning. Keith followed at a more sedated pace, his mind wandering now that he was away from everyone, the panic clawing at his belly once more.

 

What if he started changing in the middle of training? He had no idea what would trigger the transformation, anything could do it at this point. It was incredibly frustrating not knowing just when and where it would happen, if it would happen again at all.

 

Red rumbled at him half way through another round of panicked thoughts, irritated that he hadn’t come to see her yet. He gave the Lion a half hearted apology that she begrudgingly accepted, making a sound that gave Keith the impression that he better not forget again or there would be consequences. This got a chuckle out of the Red Paladin who shook his head and promised her that he couldn’t forget, the Lion purring her content before going quiet again.

 

“Today we’ll be going over what to do when you’re faced with a Galran Druid,” Coran announced once they were all gathered in the training room. “I realize we never prepared you for such a thing and I apologize for that, it just never seemed like a possibility.” It went unsaid that he hadn’t expected any of the Paladin’s to actually attack Zarkon’s ship directly as they had, so the chances of ruining into a Druid had been slim before that. “You’ve faced the Druid enhanced beasts and survived off pure luck alone, but that’ll only get you so far in the face of the Druid themselves.”

 

No one missed how stiff Shiro was as Coran prattled on, both flesh and Galra tech hands alike clenched at his sides. Keith nudged him with his elbow, giving him a look, silently asking if he was alright. Shiro just shook his head and gave a tight smile, his eyes sending a message of I’ll be fine in return. Keith wasn’t too assured by that but left the issue alone for now, focusing, vaguely, on Coran and his lesson.

 

It ended quickly enough, Coran drilling the lesson into them and handing them each a book on Druids to study later after their physical exercises. Keith was paired up with Lance and Shiro while Hunk and Pidge teamed up; it was totally unfair but since there was only five of them, one group would have had three regardless.

 

Shiro put the two of them through their paces, even calling out Pidge and Hunk when he noticed their forms were off before focusing back on Keith and Lance, fending off their attacks with such ease that it actually pissed Keith off. Lance didn’t seem to be doing much better, his face contorted in frustration as he tried his hardest to get a hit off of the older man, failing miserably as his moves became sloppy and uncoordinated.

 

“Lance, you can’t let yourself get caught up in your emotions,” Allura scolded from where she was overseeing everything. “That goes double for you, Pidge.”

 

A squawk came from Pidge’s direction, indicating that they’d heard and had probably gotten distracted enough to get knocked over by Hunk.

 

“Ha!” Lance crowed as he turned to watch Hunk and Pidge, leaving himself wide open for an attack from Shiro and Keith. However, having not coordinated the attack beforehand, they ended up getting in one another’s way. Lance was sent to the floor with a cry while Keith became unbalanced from trying to avoid a swing from Shiro’s arm and would have fallen had Shiro not reached out to grab the front of his shirt with his false arm. His arms wheeled at his sides before he found his footing again, being pulled upright with Shiro’s help.

 

As he was about to thank Shiro, he noticed the odd look the older man was giving him, his eyes fixated on his cheek.

 

“Have you always bruised this easily?” Shiro frowned, reaching out with his flesh hand to touch the spot he was so intent on staring at. Keith swatted his hand away, eyes widening a fraction as he slapped his other hand over the spot, breath hitching.

 

Not now, not now!

 

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” Keith told him, far too quickly for Shiro’s tastes. “I think I’m done for this morning.” He turned quickly, nearly running for the exit, barely hearing Allura’s protests.

 

“Something doesn’t feel right,” She bit the tip of one of her nails. “Keith isn’t one to skip out in the middle of training, that’s more Lance’s thing.”

 

“I take so much offense to that.” Lance grumbled as he picked himself up from the floor. “Besides, he’s young, probably all those teenage hormones if you catch my drift.” Allura and Coran’s deadpan looks just made him groan.

 

“I’ll talk to him later,” Shiro sighed, knowing he was probably one of the few who could actually get through to Keith. “For now though, I think we should all take a break and plan our next move.”

 

~x~x~x~

 

Keith remained locked up in his room for the remainder of the day, not even coming out for lunch or dinner which worried the rest of the team. Pidge was kind enough to take him food, which they reported were obviously eaten because when they went by, the dishes had been emptied, which brought some relief. Shiro hadn’t been able to get much out of Keith other than he didn’t feel well, which didn’t sit too well with Shiro but he accepted the excuse anyway, promising to check on Keith later.

 

“I hope he gets his act together,” Lance groused as he brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. “I still need to one up him. Hunk, you wanna get a late night snack?”

 

“Nah dude, I’m all set. Those roots I got from that last planet are actually pretty tasty by themselves, kinda tastes like jerky.” Hunk told him as he headed for his own room. “You’re welcome to get some goo if you want though, no one’s stopping you.”

 

Lance pouted at this, complaining that Hunk no longer loved him as he shuffled his way down to the kitchen, pausing when he saw a light on and heard obvious sounds of someone moving around in there. He knew for sure Shiro was still talking strategy with Allura and Coran and Pidge was in the Green Lion hanger making upgrades to Booper and the Lion and he’d just left Hunk upstairs. Could it be Keith? Nah, he’d have known, there was no way the guy slipped by without him or Hunk noticing. So then was it a stowaway? A spy from the Galra? Cautiously, clutching his bayard in his hand, he crept around the corner, peering around to try and see who, if anyone at all, was in there. He caught sight of a red jacket, the same one that Keith always wore, and relaxed.

 

“Keith, buddy, you nearly gave me a heart attack! You could have warned me you were coming down here, I almost - holy crap!”

 

“Lance?!” Purple ears flattened against an equally purple head. “I can explain.”

 

“Who the hell are you? What have you done with Keith?” Lance felt his bayard transform, aiming it at the Galra who was wearing Keith’s stolen clothes.

 

“I _am_ Keith!” The Galra held his hands up in surrender, trying his best to remain calm with the blaster pointed at him, or more specifically, his chest.

 

“Bullshit,” Lance spat. “Where is he? If you hurt him, I swear to god I’ll kill you right here and now.”

 

“I can explain! Sort of. I don’t know. I am Keith, please trust me. I-I don’t know what’s happening to me. I just sort of… woke up like this and I’m just as scared as you are right now. I think the Druids did something to me, Lance.”

 

“If you really are Keith, then tell me something only he would know.” Lance demanded, glaring at the Galra.

 

The Galra rolled his eyes, or at least that’s what it seemed like, and scowled in a very Keith like manner. He did sort of have that mullet thing going on, even if it was purple and all that.

 

“You have five siblings, six if you include yourself. You’re the middle child. Your oldest sister’s name is Elizabeth. Your mother’s name is Zamira. Do you want me to keep going?” Keith raised a brow at the now stunned Lance, watching as the bayard all but slipped from his hands and to the floor.

 

“ _Keith_?” He croaked out, unable to believe what his brain was trying to tell him. This was Keith, the one and only, but.. He was Galra. How was that possible? Lance watched as Keith’s face crumpled, those ears of his quivering against his head as sharp fangs poked out and worried his bottom lip.

 

“I’m scared.”

 

Lance was at his side in an instant, grasping his shoulders and helping him to the floor as his self-proclaimed rival fell to absolute pieces.

 

What was he supposed to do…?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, I'm sorry if Lance and Keith are a little OOC, bear with me as I get a feel for them. Also, if there are any spelling mistakes, let me know. Its like 1:30 am and I'm pretty much dead.


	3. Chapter 3

“Dude, I hate to be that person, but if we’re going to talk, we need to do it someplace not in the open.” Lance gestured wildly with his arms, which of course made Keith pretty damn uncomfortable seeing as his bayard was still active.

 

“Put that thing away before you actually shoot me!” Keith hissed, actually hissed, at the other boy, his heart pounding against his rib cage. This wasn’t how he’d foreseen his evening going, all he’d wanted to do was grab some goo bars to stockpile in his room, but instead here he was with a frantic Lance who now knew his rather ugly secret. Could it even be considered a secret since he himself had only known about it for two days at the most?

 

“Huh? Oh.” Lance was completely nonchalant as he let his bayard shrink back down, shoving the piece into his pocket before looking around wildly. “Okay, put your stupid jacket over your head, we need to get you back to your room then you can explain why you look like.. Like that!” He gestured to Keith’s body, not wanting to say “Galra” in case Allura’s mice were around to hear him or if the room had surveillance in it; if that were the case, they were screwed no matter what.

 

Keith glared but tugged his jacket off, putting it over his head, ears flattening to accommodate before he cast a look at Lance as though to say ‘now what genius?’

 

“Good, now just follow my lead.” He had that look on his face, the same one he got when he had a really dumb idea, and Keith knew right then and there he was going to want to kill Lance when he got back to his room. His claws would be pretty good for that…

 

_No, stop, you aren’t one of them. Stop thinking that._

 

As he’d suspected though, Lance and his stupidness decided to treat this like some sort of super secret spy mission and was sneaking around _Mission Impossible_ style while Keith agonized internally over why the universe hated him so much. It was only by sheer luck that they avoided Coran, Shiro, and Allura on their way back to the Paladins quarters.

 

“Okay, now seriously, tell me whats going on.” Lance demanded once Keith dragged him into his room, watching as the red paladin began to pace. It was unnerving, if he was being honest, watching this person, this Galra, that was Keith pace around, claws being wrung together, pupil-less eyes scrunched up in what he could only describe as distress. The ears were pretty distracting, twitching and flattening with every move he made, swiveling like a cats. It just didn’t sit right with Lance. They’d spent so long fighting the Galra and yet there was one right in front of him and he couldn’t bring himself to hate it.

 

 _Because it’s Keith. And he’s a friend._ His mind supplied, rationalized for him.

 

“Look, I don’t really understand it myself,” Keith huffed out, his pacing finally coming to an end. His face was still twisted with distress, ears now simply laying flat as he stared at Lance. “The other day I started noticing these weird purple blotches on my skin and I thought it was one of your dumb pranks-”

 

“Hey!” The offended noise that left his lips went unnoticed by Keith as he continued.

 

“But then they started spreading and…” His eyes widened. “Oh quiznak. I went into a healing pod. It’ll have scanned my DNA. What if it shows I’m a Galra?”

 

“Whoa, Keith, slow down.” Lance immediately got out of the chair he’d settled himself in and stood in front of the other. “No one has any reason to actually look through that. We all know you went in for bruising, no one has any reason to doubt your reasons for going in, right?” Keith gave a slow nod. “There, problem solved. Coran and Allura aren’t going to just decide ‘oh hey let’s go through all the data and see if everyone is human’ when they basically already did that when we first arrived in the Castle.”

 

“But what if they do?”

 

Lance couldn’t remember a time he’d ever seen Keith so… broken. Even if he was currently looking purple and furry, he recognized the facial expression, he’d seen it with his siblings many times over.

 

“They won’t,” Lance told him firmly. “I won’t let anyone else find out.”

 

Keith gave him a very tired, very skeptical look.

 

“What? I’m good at keeping secrets!”

 

Another even more skeptical look.

 

“Dude, I have a ton of siblings who used to use me as their secret keeper and I never once broke their trust. You can trust me with this. But you gotta explain the rest of it to me first.”

 

It was with a resigned sigh that Keith continued with his small tale. “When I woke up this morning I looked like this.” He gestured to himself, disgust coloring his features. “I mean, I got myself looking more like myself but then it started coming back during training and that’s why I left. And now I can’t get back to normal.”

 

Lance was giving him a look that clearly said ‘are you serious?’ and it actually pissed Keith off to think that Lance wasn’t taking the matter seriously.

 

“Well have you been panicking and freaking out the whole time?” Lance huffed out, crossing his arms over his chest as he leveled Keith with a weak glare.

 

“Yes. Wouldn’t you be doing the same?” Keith frowned, fidgeting from one foot to the other.

 

“Well yeah, but I don’t think panicking is really helping you right now dude. I think you have to calm down and relax before you can get your human form back.”

 

Calm? How did Lance expect him to be _calm_ when he currently looked like a fucking Galra?

 

“You’re asking the impossible,” Keith growled, clenching his fists at his sides.

 

“No, you’re just making it seem like it’s impossible,” Lance drawled. “Stop being an ass for a little bit and just trust me on this, okay? I know how to deal with this.”

 

“Oh yes, because you’ve definitely dealt with suddenly changing species.” Keith sneered, ears twitching back to show his anxiety.

 

“No, but I’ve dealt with drama queen meltdowns like you’re having.”

 

Keith was pretty damn sure Lance just insulted him.

 

Hands were suddenly on his shoulders, squeezing, and Lance was talking again.

 

“Breathe with me. In and out, in and out.” Keith thought it was stupid but he decided to entertain Lance, going along with his deep breathing. Soon though, he found himself relaxing, the tension from earlier starting to melt out of his body, the tightness in his chest lessening. Okay, so maybe Lance wasn’t quite as stupid as Keith thought… “Whoa…”

 

Keith looked up again, suddenly afraid. Was something wrong? Had he done something?

 

“It’s so weird, watching your human skin come back while you still have some of the Galra features.” Lance’s eyes were wide, curious, as one of his hands came up and touched the top of a slowly receding ear. It twitched away from the contact and Keith swatted at his hand in annoyance, reaching up to feel it as it returned to its normal rounded shape. “What’d I tell you?”

 

Oh how Keith wanted to smack that smug look off of Lance’s face. He was going to become even more intolerable after this, Keith already knew it.

 

“Yeah.. thanks.”

 

Whatever Lance was about to say died on his tongue when Keith’s words registered, leaving him dumbstruck. Keith had just thanked him. Keith. The worlds biggest asshole and the man who sported an out of date hairstyle.

 

“Uh.. you’re welcome.” He rubbed the back of his neck, not sure what else to really say. Lance had been prepared to argue, nag at Keith to thank him and admit he was the best in the universe. He hadn’t expected an outright thank you from the red paladin. “So yeah, I’ll be going now. I swear this’ll stay between us, Keith, I won’t let anyone know about this.” He was being serious and he just hoped Keith knew that. “Goodnight.” All of his playfulness was gone as he stepped back, looking over his shoulder before exiting Keith’s room.

 

And of course the universe just had to keep throwing things Keith’s way, because as soon as the door opened, Lance ran into Allura and Shiro. The blue paladin jumped and stammered, quickly bolting away back to his own room, a loud smack echoing through the hall as he fell.

 

“Keith, is everything okay?” Shiro’s voice broke through the wall of noise that the anxiety brought on, making Keith’s head snap up. He vaguely heard Allura say a quiet goodnight, Keith’s eyes remaining locked on Shiro as the older paladin edged into the room, concern present in his features and careful movements. “What was Lance doing in here? Did you two get into another fight?”

 

“No, I… I was having a panic attack,” He told him softly. It wasn’t like he was lying, not completely anyway, he had been having a panic attack. “Lance helped me through it. He’s surprisingly knowledgeable about it.”

 

“Well I for one am not surprised,” Shiro huffed softly, moving to sit where Lance had been not minutes before. It put Keith on edge, just a bit, because he had no idea how long it would be until his body decided to change again back into that of a Galran. “He has five brothers and sisters that he’s dealt with most of his life, he’s no doubt dealt with his fair share of panic attacks and toddler meltdowns.”

 

Keith gave him an extremely dry look which had Shiro chuckling and giving a small apology.

 

“But seriously, I’m glad he was around to help you through it. Though, what brought it on if you don’t mind me asking?” And just like that, Shiro was in concerned big brother/dad mode.

 

“I’m not really sure,” Keith turned to look away, turned so that Shiro wouldn’t see the guilty expression on his face. “One minute I was fine, and the next I wasn’t.”

 

“That’s usually how it goes, yeah.” Shiro knew that better than anyone by now. One minute he could be training and in the next second he could be flat on his ass having a panic attack over something that someone said or did that reminded him of his missing year. “Whatever it was, I hope you’re able to recognize the cause the next time it happens. It.. it helps knowing what triggers the attacks, but it doesn’t always make it easier to deal with.”

 

Keith felt like the wind was taken out of his sails as he listened to Shiro, the guilt of lying, even partially, already eating at the younger paladin. His shoulders slumped, chin dropping until it just about touched his chest as he sighed.

 

“I know.. Thanks, Takashi.” He turned back around and moved, drawing Shiro into a rare hug. “If anything starts bugging me, I’ll come find you, I promise.”

 

“You say that, but I know you, Keith,” Shiro chuckled against the top of his head, squeezing him back gently. “You’ll just keep it to yourself and give me your usual answer.”

 

“... shut up.”

 

“Stubborn,” Shiro poked his side gently, watching with amusement as Keith danced away from him, face a faint pink. “Get some rest, we’ve got a long day tomorrow. We’re going planetside to help get rid of the remaining Galra troops.”

 

“Right, you get at least an hour in and I’ll be happy.” Everyone knew that Shiro hardly slept, too wracked with memories and nightmares to get a full, peaceful night. How he functioned on so little sleep, no one was sure, but Keith had a feeling it was a survival thing that had been ingrained in him from his time as Champion in the arena.

 

“We’ll see,” Shiro gave a small smile as he got up and slipped out of the room, leaving Keith on his own once again.

 

Left alone to his thoughts, Keith wasn’t sure what to do, so he did the only thing he could think of: he stripped out of his clothes and headed into the bathroom to look his body over.

 

There was no sign of purple on him, that was good, but he still didn’t know what triggered the changes to begin with or what was even causing them. Sighing in frustration, he turned the water on and started to fill the bath, deciding to soak in relax, something he only did on rare occasions. After a year in the desert, he’d learned that conserving water was for the best and had often gone days without actually showering.

 

As he sat in the bath, letting it fill, he noticed the punctures from this morning lining the bottom of the sink, cringing at the sight. Had he actually done that? Keith looked at his hands, flexing his fingers a few times, wondering just how much stronger he was in his Galran form. It was terrifying to think of what he could do in that form but it also gave him a small thrill to know that he could probably fight on a Galra’s level, fight equal to them, possibly equal to Zarkon…

 

_Yeah right._

 

Their last fight should have proven just how much of a gap there was in experience. Zarkon had over ten thousand years experience on Keith, it was no wonder he’d gotten beaten so badly.

 

Keith shut the water off and sat in the bath long after his skin began to prune, simply lost in his thoughts and worries, his mind always going back to the fact that Lance knew. He knew and he promised to keep it a secret but a little part of Keith wondered just how long the Cuban would be able to keep his mouth shut. He couldn’t blame Lance if he decided to tell Allura, Keith was a monster after all, one of the enemy.

 

It wasn’t until a shiver crawled up his spine that Keith got out, letting the water drain, aimlessly wandering back into his room to pull on a clean pair of boxers and finish drying himself off. Exhaustion finally seemed to catch up, his body heavy and sluggish as he dropped onto the bed, not even making any kind of effort to cover himself up even though he knew he should; Lance and subsequently Hunk and Pidge had a habit of bursting into his room if he wasn’t the first one up in the morning. That could prove disastrous if his body decided to change again while he slept.

 

But he would leave tomorrow’s problems, for tomorrow’s him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long folks! I've been sick since like last monday and it's only now started to go away and I was at a convention over the weekend (which didn't help me recover from my sickness). But! I got lots of cute Voltron stuff!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter and the fluff in it. Again, sorry for any OOCness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith's day sucks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my Stars I'm so sorry for how long it took me to update! Finals happened, Thanksgiving happened, and now Christmas Holiday hours are happening at work. But! I finally got it together with the help of a darling friend from tumblr, blu3t3amrul3s. They helped me write parts of today's chapter, and helped me with spanish translations!

Lance was up early the next day, earlier than he ever was normally, just to go and check on Keith. He had even forgone his usual skin routines just to do so before anyone else in the castle woke up. He was half convinced he’d dreamed up the entire thing, because there was just no way his broody, mullet haired teammate was actually part Galra.

 

Walking up to Keith’s room, he was prepared to knock only to find that the door opened for him, which immediately sent a flash of concern through the Cuban boy. Keith never left the door unlocked when he slept, even when he wasn’t in there it was usually locked. Swallowing, Lance forced his legs to move, bringing him into the dimly lit room so he could do a quick sweep of it to assess what was happening. Nothing seemed out of place, which was a relief, but there was no sign of Keith.

 

“Keith? Buddy, you in here?” He closed the door as he stepped further in, eyes catching a large, moving lump on the bed. Was Keith still asleep? That was highly unusual, the red paladin was normally up at this point so for him to still be sleeping was sort of worrisome to Lance. Creeping towards the bed, Lance got an idea, his lips pulling into a wide grin as he wiggled his fingers a few inches above the lump. “Wakey wakey, mullet man!” Lance went right for what he hoped was Keith’s sides, wriggling his fingers and cackling as Keith yelped and flailed, nearly kicking him in the face in the process.

 

“What the actual fuck, Lance?!” Keith’s head popped out from under the covers and Lance’s laughter died out just as quickly as it had begun, eyes wide and jaw slack.

 

He’d most definitely not been dreaming the other night.

 

Keith sat before him in all his purple, fuzzy glory, glaring at him with those unnerving yellow eyes, sharp fangs bared in a snarl with ears pinned back against his skull in agitation.

 

“Jesus…” He muttered a few choice words in Spanish, eyes never leaving the Galra in front of him. “I was hoping yesterday was a dream but it’s not and holy fuck dude, you’re purple!”

 

“Could you yell it louder for the rest of the castle to hear?” Keith snarked at him. “I can’t control it, it just happens. What the hell are you doing in here anyway?”

 

“For this exact reason.” Lance shook off the shock and huffed, scowling right back at Keith. “Your door was unlocked, you’re pretty damn lucky I’m the one who came in here and not Pidge or Shiro.” Though why Pidge would even enter Keith’s room was beyond him, he was just giving examples. “I mostly just came to check on you but I can see that my concern was misplaced.”

 

“I don’t need your pity, Lance!” Keith snapped at him, watching as Lance’s face hardened.

 

“Dude, I’m not doing this out of pity,” Lance screwed his face up as he sat on the bed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Can’t you ever accept that someone is actually, genuinely concerned about your dumb mullet haired self? Or is that right specifically reserved for Shiro?”

 

Keith’s ears betrayed the anger that rushed through his body at the accusation, baring his teeth at Lance again even as he kept himself from lunging at his fellow paladin. He was just so infuriating, Keith just wanted to punch him repeatedly until he got it through his thick skull how annoying he was. But he didn’t. Instead he settled for glaring and growling, both of which seemed to have the opposite affect of what was intended.

 

“You’re so cat like it’s ridiculous.” Lance suddenly grinned and Keith just had to wonder what he was thinking. He didn’t have long to wonder as Lance’s hands were suddenly on his head, nails digging in just right at the base of his ears and ohhh. Oh wow. That felt good.

 

“Lance, get your hands off!” Keith grit out even as his traitorous body started to lean into the touch.

 

~x~x~x~

 

Hunk and Pidge stood just outside Keith’s door, Pidge grinning widely while Hunk was a flustered mess.

 

“S-stop touching them! They’re sensitive!”

 

Hunk wanted to cover his ears but he also wanted to keep listening.

 

“Keith, it twitches and it’s so soft! I know you like it~”

 

Oh Pidge was definitely recording this for blackmail later on down the line.

 

They heard what could only be described as a drawn out moan before the distinct sound of flesh meeting flesh rang out. And then utter silence.

 

Hunk was the first to bolt, nearly crashing into Shiro as he came around the corner looking for the rest of the paladins. Shiro turned to watched Hunk only to shrug and turn his attention to Pidge, who was trying their damned hardest not to crack up.

 

“What’s going on?” Shiro greeted, watching as Pidge put a finger to their lips and shushed him. Oh...kay that was different but he obeyed, keeping quiet and listening. “Keith and Lance are arguing, that’s not new, Pidge.” Shiro sighed, shaking his head even as the younger paladin flailed and tried to explain that there was no way they were just arguing. “Just head up for breakfast, Pidge, I’ll deal with them.”

 

Pidge huffed a bit but relented, walking away with one last fleeting glance at the door.  
“Keith? Lance? Whatever you two are fighting about, you need to let it end. It’s time for breakfast and it’s just way too early for you guys to be doing this.” Shiro heard, distinctly, the sound of someone hitting the floor and hoped that neither one of them was doing any serious damage to the other. Honestly, it was like he couldn’t leave them alone together for a second without them starting a fight with one another. Toddlers, the both of them.

 

The door opened and Lance slipped out, sporting a bloody lip and, from what he could see, a good sized shiner on his eye. Shiro hated to think that Lance deserved it but knowing Lance, he probably did. Keith slipped out a moment later, rumpled and more sour looking than normal, his nose dripping just a bit of blood that he quickly wiped away on the sleeve of his jacket.

 

“Not a word, Shiro.” Keith hissed as Shiro opened his mouth to ask what had occurred. So he shut his mouth and gave a small smile, turning to head to the kitchen with Keith.

 

“Sooo… did you two have a good morning?” Pidge looked between Keith and Lance once everyone was sitting. They’d noticed the blood of course and it only brought up more questions in their mind.

 

“No.” They answered simultaneously.

 

This of course set them both off on each other, bickering like an old married couple and very nearly starting a food goo fight with one another. Shiro stopped it of course, looking exasperated and just so done with them and it was still only the morning hours.

 

Once everyone had calmed down and changed into their paladin armor, they gathered on the bridge for a quick briefing.

 

“We will remain in orbit as your support while you take the lions and take out the remainder of the Galra troops.” Allura explained, pulling up a map of where the remaining troops were currently stationed. “The central camp still has prisoner’s, our main priority will be their safety.”

 

“Will we be breaking into teams?” Pidge asked, adjusting their glasses.

 

“Yes, but once you take out the satellite camps, it’ll become a group effort.” Coran responded to them.

 

“Shiro, I’ll need you to take care of the southern camp,” Allura looked at Shiro before assigning individual posts to the rest of the team. “Once you are finished, regroup and head for the central camp. Once there, I want Hunk to head for the prisoner’s and get them to safety. Your lion has the thickest armor, so they will be the safest with you. I’ll send a pod here so you can drop them off and return to the fight.”

 

Hunk seemed to puff up a little bit even though his nervousness was blatantly obvious.

 

“If everything goes well, then this mission shouldn’t take that long at all.” Allura was unusually cheerful but the team supposed someone had to be, since Lance seemed to be quieter than he usually was before a mission. It went without saying that there was likely to be a celebration once the planet was liberated from the Galra. Which meant food other than goo for the paladins.

 

“Let’s go, team.” Shiro looked around the room before the others were heading to the lion hangers, he himself doing the same once he was sure the others were on their way.

 

Keith was doing his best to remain calm but anxiety was creeping its way into his mind, the fear that he would suddenly change in the middle of the mission taking hold of his heart.

 

“Keith, Keeeiiitthhh. Earth to mullet man!” Keith jolted out of his thoughts, jerking back in his seat when he finally realized Lance was trying to contact him on a private channel. “ _Dios mío_ have you gone deaf now too on top of everything else? I’ve been trying to get your attention for like ten minutes!”

 

“Lance, we haven’t even been out of the Castle ten minutes.” Keith deadpanned, heart still racing from Lance’s sudden interruption. It was a welcome one at least, it distracted him from the chaos that was his mind and fears. “What do you even want? I know the private connections don’t last long and I swear if you’re trying to do some comforting bullshit..”

 

“Dude, seriously, you need to chill.” Lance’s face portrayed exactly how exasperated he was with Keith’s tough guy act. He knew the signs of a panic attack when he saw it and Keith was most definitely about to have one or was in the beginning stages of it. “Do I need to do the breathing thing again? Because I totally will, it worked last time.”

 

Keith ignored him for a moment, focusing on guiding Red to the coordinates Allura had given him just before they left the hanger. His eyes darted to the side screen and nearly regretted it. Lance had that damn smug look on his face, the one that got right under Keith’s skin every time he saw it, whether it was aimed at him or not.

 

“I’m fine, Lance,” He heaved out a heavy breath.

 

“If anything happens, just stay low and I’ll cover for you.” Lance’s expression morphed into a more serious one, something Keith rarely saw happen. It was with that parting smirk that Keith cut off the connection and focused on the hopefully easy task at hand.

 

~x~x~x~

 

His heart was racing. They had severely underestimated the amount of small battle cruisers that was guarding the prison camp and Keith was almost positive that there hadn’t been any of those laser towers in the original schematics. Even with the unexpected surprises, it was still easy enough to get through all of the Galran defenses. Except that suddenly it wasn’t. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. Maybe he was just scared of going Galra in the middle of battle or that maybe his nerves were finally starting to get the better of him. It didn’t matter because right now he had to knock down that tower before it shot at Shiro again and he was freezing up like Lance had just knocked him and Red sideways with that ice cannon.

 

“Keith! What’s going on, you’ve just stopped, what happened?” Shiro’s voice was muffled in ears just like all the rest of the noise of battle and the only clear sound he could make out was his own ragged breathing.

 

“What’s going on out there?! Are the towers and cruisers cleared yet? I can’t keep averting enemy fire for much longer down here!” Hunk called out but all Keith could focus on was that his hand looked purple. Fuck.

 

“Ugh!! Lance, tell your boyfriend to get a grip already; we need help!”

 

If he had been in the right mindspace he’d have probably been annoyed at Pidge for that comment but he was currently trying to claw his skin off.

 

“KEITH!” He stopped scratching at his arm and turned to his comms screen. It was the private channel and he could tell that Blue was probably taking a hell of a beating because red lights bathed his teammates cockpit and Lance looked extremely stressed. Keith blinked once and looked down to his hand. It was still his normal human color albeit very red from all the clawing Keith was doing. He barely heard Lance’s command to look at him.

 

“Buddy, look, you’re okay. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you now just breath and take those last two cruisers out. I got the towers. You can do this, man. I believe in you.” And when Lance started to breathe slowly despite the fact that Blue wasn’t going to survive another hit Keith found himself breathing along.

 

His hands started to move again, he wasn’t shaking as much as before and things actually seemed real. Which is both a good and bad thing when in the middle of a battle during an intergalactic war for the universe. Good cause now he can focus on getting those annoying ass cruisers to stop shooting at Lance and bad because, well, war for the universe and all that jazz.

 

It was when Lance took out the final tower and that damned cruiser managed to shoot one last time before Keith could smash it in Red’s jaw that the numbness came back. The laser hit Blue straight in the back and she and her paladin went down and they went down hard. The last thing he remembers was Hunk screaming Lance’s name over the main comms and Shiro yelling at him to not follow while he pushed the control yokes as far as they could go and swan dived for the other lion. He landed, placing Red just in front of Blue so she could defend while he jerked back from the controls and dashed out, only able to hear the hard pounding of blood in his ears, vision swimming in a red haze as he began to cut down any and all enemy combatants that dared to get close.

 

All he could think about was making sure Lance was okay, keeping him safe, they all needed to make it out of this alive after all and if it hadn’t been for him, Lance probably wouldn’t have needed to take that hit at all. The blood pounding in his ears drowned out every ounce of noise, even the shrill cries of his teammates as they tried to contact him and get him to grab Lance and pull back. It was almost as though time slowed for him, cutting down sentries and Galran soldier’s alike with his bayard, his skin crawling beneath his suit.

 

He couldn’t control it.

 

Keith knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this was dangerous and he was putting his life on the line but that really wasn’t new, the team did that on a near daily basis now, but this was a different kind of dangerous. He was risking exposure. He risked his secret becoming known to the team but in that moment, he didn’t give a single flying fuck. He just knew that he needed to protect his teammate until Lance was able to get Blue up and moving again.

 

A guttural scream rose into the air, Keith didn’t know from where, though he was vaguely aware that he himself had released the noise as he shoved his clawed hand into the chest of a sentry, ripping out some of its inner mechanics before whirling and striking actual flesh, bayard meeting the neck of a Galran soldier. Some part of him was pleased as he watched purple blood slide down the blade, though his own blood ran cold when he made out the words the Galra was trying to form.

 

“One of us.”

 

“I am not one of you, I will _never_ be one of you!” Keith ended the soldier’s life in a spray of blood, the red paladin smiling though it was more of a snarl as he turned to look for any other threats.

 

“-eith!”

 

Keith froze as the haze began to lift, Lance’s voice cutting through it, a sudden fear gripping his heart as he prayed the team hadn’t heard him as he fought the Galra.

 

“Keith!? It’s okay, they’re gone, you beat them!” The voice was echoed, one inside his helmet and the other right behind him. He turned slowly, fearful, eyes downcast as exhaustion took hold of him, the adrenaline wearing off far too quickly. “C’mon buddy, you gotta calm down.” Hands grasped his shoulders, Keith’s eyes being drawn up to Lance’s face. The other paladin looked okay, a little banged up, but okay. And safe. He was safe.

 

“I’m a monster.” Those were the last words to leave him as he collapsed against Lance, sagging against the taller boy heavily.

 

“Uh, Keith?” Lance gave him a little shake, brows pinching together when the red paladin didn’t respond. He was still breathing, so he was alive, had he passed out? Yeah, that had to be it. “Great time for you to pass out, mullet man, you’re still all Galra!” He hissed out, looking around frantically. This wasn’t good, not one bit, nope.

 

Just had to go and be a hero, couldn’t just grab Blue and high-tail it out of there, no of course he couldn’t. He was Keith fucking Kogane, mullet extraordinaire, and was currently a fucking purple space cat thing. Which just made this whole situation so much better, because now he had to try and get Keith back to the Castle without revealing his secret. Easier said than done of course.

 

“Why do you need to make things difficult? _Singauo puto de madre_.” He huffed, hauling Keith back towards the Lions, Blue making worried noises and asking if Red’s cub was alright. “He’s fine, Blue, just a fucking pain in the ass and currently passed out.” This apparently got a chuckle out of his Lion and a grumble from Red if Blue’s laughter was anything to go by. “Look, your paladin is a self-sacrificing asshole right now, I have every right to be freaked out and mad at him.” He shifted Keith in his arms, dragging him up the ramp in order to get them both into Blue. “Now.. gotta find some way to hide your stupid purple face…”

 

Looking through some of the storage drawers and emergency supplies, Lance managed to find what looked like an insulated blanket of sorts, or a cloak maybe, he wasn’t sure which, but it gave him an idea.

 

“Sorry, dude, you’re gonna look like a Druid until I can get you back to your room.” Lance muttered as he carefully manipulated Keith’s body until he was able to make a crude cloak that would cover what needed covering to avoid any suspicious looks from the others. “Hopefully Pidge doesn’t get up close and personal,” Because if they did, Lance was pretty sure his and Keith’s covers would be blown and the big purple secret would be out in the open. Unless he could convince the green paladin that Keith simply had dried Galra blood all over his face. It was a plausible but he didn’t want to risk it.  
“Lance, do you have Keith?” Shiro cut into Lance’s panic, his head jerking up when Shiro appeared on the screen. His heart skipped a few beats, angling himself so that Shiro couldn’t see Keith laid out on the floor behind him.

 

“Yeah, I got him. He’s passed out, nothing to worry about though. I think his hero moment just drained him, that’s all.”

 

“The prisoners are on their way to the Castle, we’re bringing up the rear now. Get yourselves back as soon as you can. It looks like we’ve finished off the remaining troops.”

 

 _Yeah, more like Keith took out whoever was left single handedly_. Lance thought to himself as he leaned back, Shiro’s image cutting out.

 

“Alright, Blue, grab Red and we’re outta here.”

 

~x~x~x~

 

One of us.

 

It was like some sort of bad cliche as Keith shot up and yelled, eyes wide, sweat drenching his body. His stomach clenched and tightened, threatening to heave up the goo he’d eaten earlier in the day. At first he was tempted to think it’d all been a nightmare, Lance being shot down, his going Galra in the middle of a fight…

 

But the blood crusted on his face and along his flight suit told a different story.

 

He remembered Lance being shot down, how he’d dived after him and exited his Lion.. but he could barely remember anything after that, it was all jumbled up in a thick fog almost. His breathing became ragged and shallow, his heart hammering against his rib cage, threatening to burst free at any given moment.

 

“Welcome back to the land of the living, mullet.”

Breath hitching, Keith looked up and found Lance’s face near his own, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he leaned back, settling himself on the edge of Keith’s bed. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to wake up at all.”

 

Lance shifted on the mattress and reached towards Keith’s bedside table. The halfling blinked as the blue paladin offered him a water pouch with a small smile on his face.

 

“Here. I thought you’d be thirsty or something so I brought a couple of these with me.” Keith took the pouch with a shaking hand and thanked all manner of higher beings that Lance had the foresight to punch the straw in for him.

 

He sat in silence with the other for a while. The only real noise being him drinking from the pouches and Lance shifting in his spot every ten fucking seconds. It was driving Keith’s nerves up the wall.

 

“Could you stop moving?” He snapped and Lance stilled, holding his hands up defensively.

 

“Sorry. Sheesh, way to show your appreciation for the guy that kept your furry purple ass from being seen by the others.” Keith almost spat the water in Lance’s face.

 

“What?!” He quickly started to pat himself down, breathing starting to become unstable as he tried to keep himself human. Lance scowled and grabbed the other’s wrists, forcing Keith to look at him.

 

“Calm down! You reverted back about half an hour ago. You’re fine. It’s okay.” keith didn’t looked convinced at all and was struggling to get his wrists out of Lance’s grip. The Cuban sighed and let him go. He watched as Keith meticulously checked every inch of skin he could see for those traitorous purple marks.

 

He only settled down somewhat when he found nothing. Lance waited for him to speak but found that Keith was looking at him; it was as if the other was expecting him to… Oh. Right, Keith was out cold for most of the time here. He probably needed to be caught up.

 

“Uhm, okay, so.” Such a strong start Lance. “You passed out on me back at the prison camp and you were still all fuzzy and purple so obviously I had to think of something to make sure the others wouldn’t, you know, figure it out. So I kinda threw a blanket over you and bullshitted my way to your room. Blue hauled Red into her hangar, in case you were wondering.” That was the most shitty explanation he has ever word vomited on someone.

 

Keith seemed to accept it though. Thank fuck.

 

“It was kinda funny in a really morbid sorta way cause you kinda looked like a Galra Druid.” Keith looked like he had just been told he killed 80 puppies in cold blood. “But! But, it’s okay cause it worked and no one was the wiser and you’re secret is still safe, chinchilla ears.”

 

Keith felt his left eye twitch in annoyance. “Call me that again and I’ll put glue in your hair products.”

 

Lance narrowed his eyes. “I helped to keep your fuzzy purple butt a secret and this is how you thank me? The disrespect.” He shook his head in mock disappointment before smiling at Keith.

 

“Glad that you’re feeling better at least.” The tone in his voice made something in Keith melt.

 

“You helped.” That was a dumb response but if the look on Lance’s face was anything to go by, it was enough.

 

A sort of awkward silence fell over them then, the silence only pierced by the light sounds of Keith drinking through the straw and a small cough from Lance.

 

“So… yeah, I’m going to leave these with you and head down to grab some of the food the natives made for us. Want me to bring you a plate later?” Lance stood from the bed, straightening out his jacket a bit.

 

“Huh? Sure, I guess. I’m not exactly feeling up to food.” He felt sick and honestly, he just wanted to wash all the blood off and go back to sleep, try and forget the events of the day.

 

“Right. See ya.” Lance gave a little salute before quickly slipping out of the room, leaving Keith alone with his thoughts once more.

 

Today sucked.


	5. Chapter 5

Days began to pass very quickly after that for Keith, every mission becoming somewhat of a blur. With each passing day, the ability to control his transformations into a Galra became weaker and weaker, the Galra part of him coming out more and more often, usually when he didn’t want it to happen; most of the time it happened during training or downtime with the team. No one seemed to really notice Keith’s need to suddenly distance himself, no one except for maybe Lance but Lance was the only person who knew the actual reason so Keith didn’t think Lance counted.

Weeks went by, Keith locking himself in his quarters often and for days at a time, refusing to come out, claiming illness or homesickness. Other days he could be heard on the training deck, which he locked for private sessions when he needed to work off aggression and hopefully wear himself out enough to revert back. If there was one thing he’d noticed over the weeks, it was that wearing himself out in his Galra form tended to allow for an easier transition back to his human body. But that raised the problem of him being exhausted in front of the others and while he could get away with it in front of Pidge, because her sleep cycle was just as fuck awful as his own so she really had no room to say anything, and Lance, who knew the actual reason for his new, almost constantly tired state, the others…

It’s hell trying to get Hunk off his back and worse yet to try and shake off Shiro. Coran isn’t as bad as the other two but the worried looks and gentle reminders to rest and take it easy made Keith feel, ironically, uneasy. Allura tried in her own, special, princess-that-has-obviously-never-been-in-contact-with-anyone-outside-of-other-royalty-and-her-servants way.

In a way he felt strangely warm about the obvious concern the others showed and he mostly brushed it off. It was weird but nice. The only downside to his new regiment of closing off everybody but Lance and training on his own was that it was interfering with their ability to work as a team, much less form Voltron. Keith hated being the weak link.

“So I had this idea,” Lance stopped fiddling with.. Whatever it was he had in his hands to look at Keith from where he was on the floor. The blue paladin had taken to lounging in Keith’s room when the halfling was having one of his ‘purple’ days as they’d both come to call them.

“If it’s one of your ideas it’s either insanely good or insanely bad.” Keith spoke without really thinking and Lance’s snort was entirely graceful.

“You want to hear it or not, mullet?” He drawled, rolling over onto his stomach to prop his chin into his hands. He took Keith’s silence as permission to continue. “So, I was thinking, instead of wearing yourself out on your own, why don’t I train with you? Gives you someone to test your strength on, and an actual person to fight against instead of the Gladiators.”

“What? No, absolutely not, Lance.” Keith’s ears pulled back, yellow eyes wide with panic. There was no way he would let Lance do that, he wasn’t going to use his Galra strength on the other like that. He was putting himself in a lot of danger that way and Keith just could not, in good consciousness, allow Lance to do that.

“Keith, buddy, pal, the purple space cat in my life, listen to me.” The pet names were totally unnecessary in Keith’s opinion. “This way you can learn you’re own strength and be able to train with everyone else! ‘Cause, you know, you’ll know when to hold the punches back and junk.”

Okay, so maybe Lance made a bit more sense than Keith wanted to admit.

“Because, sorry to say, but we need to be able to do team training again so we can form Voltron without you freaking out. It might also help to calm you down, the key word being might.” Keith sighed deeply. Nope. He was still totally against this. But Lance looked like he wasn’t going to drop the topic and, to his endless annoyance, the blue paladin was right.

They needed to be able to form Voltron and work as a team without his dumb insecurities getting in the way. It was such a pain in the ass when he was right. Fucking hell.

“Fine, just to shut you up,” Keith pinched between his eyes, nose wrinkling in a way that Lance found stupidly cute and very cat like. “But if things get too intense, we’re stopping and never speaking of it again. Got it?” 

“Got it, fuzz butt.” 

Well those names weren’t going away anytime soon it seemed.

“Shut your face, Lance.”

“Nah, you’d miss me talking too much.” Why was he so annoying even when he was trying to be helpful? Jesus fuck. “Now, why don’t we smuggle you up to the training deck and get started. Grab your cloak and let’s go!” Keith was going to regret this.

Sneaking into the training room was decidedly easier than they had thought and while he was thankful it still felt off to Keith that it was. It felt almost too good to be true.

Lance made sure that the locks were set and couldn’t be opened from the outside, a little trick he’d learned from Pidge out of boredom, before turning to face Keith.

“We should both definitely be in our armor for this,” Lance hummed softly, the rational part of him knowing that facing Keith in his civilian clothing was a very terrible idea. “Or at least I should be.” Keith waved his hand at him, the only indication he’d actually been listening as the Galra removed his jacket and folded it carefully. Another thing Lance had noticed was how infinitely careful Keith was about his clothing, like he was afraid he’d tear it with his claws if he used too much force. Which, in Lance’s opinion, was a very real concern.   
Keith didn’t like to talk about what had happened while Lance was knocked out those weeks ago in the battle, but Lance assumed he’d done something to warrant all the caution with his claws. Probably ripped a few holes in underwear. Who knows?

Keith waited on Lance to change into his armor, nervously tapping his foot and blatantly ignoring the fuzzy bit of tail that squirmed uncomfortably in his pants. Damned thing. He was just glad he didn’t have to change. If Lance ever saw that thing he’d never live it down. He is so sure of it. Fuzz butt he can handle but if he has to hear one stupid nickname concerning the existence of the appendage currently nestled rather cozily above his ass he is going to flip shit.

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road,” Lance hooted, drawing Keith’s attention away from his tail and back to the blue paladin who was now fully dressed in his armor. “I won’t be using my bayard because of obvious reasons. If I hit you with it, yeah you’re gonna be in a pod for like a week or even dead.”

Keith could accept that and he knew what kind of power that bayard had, so it was a fair enough statement. 

“Which means that today you aren’t using yours either. Just your fists and claws, I’ll have my shield obviously.” Just for emphasis he powered it up and crouched behind it just a little, cocky smirk once again settling on his face. Something deep in Keith wanted him to wipe that damned smirk off his face. The methods it wanted to use were not… PG. Yeah, let’s go with that. 

He had to concentrate on kicking Lance’s ass as softly as he could. He shook his head and tried to clear his mind of anything might cause him to go into a rage and accidentally kill Lance. That was the absolute last thing he needed right now. With one deep breath, Keith got into a fighting stance and pounced.

Lance, not expecting the speed with which Keith came at him, let out a yelp and held up his shield, letting Keith’s claws bounce off of it harmlessly before dancing backwards to avoid a swipe from the other side, blue eyes widening to a near comical point.

“A little warning next time!” He grumbled more to himself than to Keith, watching those ears twitch and swivel, a scowl crossing his features to indicate he’d heard exactly what Lance had said.

“You think an actual Galra is going to give you any warning when they attack you?” Keith huffed out as he lunged again, this time trying to get behind Lance and attack.

It went on like this for what seemed like forever when in actuality it was merely hours. Keith hit a lot harder than he did as a human and that was evident in the already forming bruises on Lance’s face and legs, along with the multitude of cuts and gashes that went along his body from the training session. Keith felt absolutely sick to his stomach from just that, unable to bring himself to actually justify any of it. He’d tried apologizing countless times only to have Lance tiredly brush it off and promise that it was fine, that it was the point of the training; for Keith to be aware of how hard he hit and how much he had to tone it down. His drawn down ears were the only indication of how he was feeling as Lance pulled on his shirt, wincing the whole way.

“I’d say today was a pretty successful one.” Lance chirped, grinning wide as he looked over at Keith. “Now we can start gauging how much you have to tone everything down and pull back your punches. I know we’re mostly just going to be training with team when you’re human but a bit of your Galra strength leaks through at times so you have to be pretty conscious of that.” He rambled on as he stood and hid the limp he was now nursing.

He was pretty sure part of his leg was broken or fractured from that last kick he’d taken from Keith. Not that he’d let him know that directly. Keith still looked like a kicked kitten just from seeing all of his visible wounds. Last thing he’d want is for Keith to be scared of himself and stop their training. He had to get to know and accept himself. They’d never be able to do their duties as paladins otherwise.

The med bay was, thankfully, empty. Not surprise seeing as it was lights out in less than half an hour and Lance had taken the earlier part of the day to help Coran clean them. That had been exceedingly awkward. And now he himself would be occupying one of the pods for a good portion of the night and into the next day no doubt. 

“I think we made a bit of a breakthrough today, Keith, I really do.” Lance hissed and sighed as he was eased into the medical suit and into a pod. “Well, catch you in the morning!” He lifted his hand in a wave, grinning widely before he dropped it to his side, the glass or whatever it was coming up and sealing him inside, knocking him out as well.

Keith let out a quiet huff, having to focus for a moment before his body shifted back, human skin slowly crawling over his body to overtake the purple and fur. He felt his ears round out and sighed, rolling his shoulders as he made sure everything was back the way it was supposed to be. He looked down at his hands and stared at them for a bit as he flexed the fingers and cracked his knuckles. A quick glance at Lance did nothing to settle the uneasy foreboding in the pit of his stomach and suddenly he wished he could be anywhere but in the void of space, standing in front of a pod that held the only other living person that knew his god awful secret. 

Unfortunately the universe hates him and doesn’t care about his wishes so he’s stuck right in a place he doesn’t want to be in and he’s just gonna have to deal with it. Whoopee. He hates the universe. So with that little brood session over, Keith made his way back to his room, stalking the empty halls and collapsing on his bed once he gets through the door. Keith sighs into his pillow and throws the covers over his head.

Tomorrow he was probably gonna need to bullshit an excuse as to why Lance isn’t at breakfast and or why he was in the med bay. How fun.  
~*~*~

“Rise and shine, ya furry! I brought you breakfast.” Keith did not yelp and he most definitely didn’t hit his head on the low hanging top of his bed trying to quickly sit up. He groaned and yanked the blankets off his head to glare at whoever just gave him that rude awakening and-

Oh. “Lance? You’re out of the pod already??” That was surprising. Lance just laughed that cute, little laugh of his and shook his head.

“Come on Keith, give me a bit more credit, will ya? I’m much tougher than I look.” Keith blinked and numbly took the plate Lance had been shoving into his chest for a few seconds now and bit on his lip.

“But you were really hurt last night…” Keith’s nose crinkled as he remembered the limping and all the bruises his friend had the night before. He was sure it was gonna take well into today for him to completely heal up. Lance patted his shoulder and this made the halfling look up.

“It’s cool man. I heal pretty fast anyways.” He waved it off like nothing. “I ended up getting out halfway through the night. Not too bad, if I say so myself.” He seemed like himself so Keith was willing to let it go. Maybe he was worrying too much. 

Looking at his plate he was a little astonished to see that it slightly resembled something they’d eat on Earth. Two strangely pink eggs, something that resembled a sausage link and two strips of blue bacon made…

“Did you really rearrange the food on my plate to make a smiley face?” Lance looked so proud of himself and Keith could only snort.

“Dork.”

“I might be a dork but at least I can admit to it,” Lance grinned as he flopped down onto the bed beside Keith. “Now dig in while it’s still hot, it took me ages to make this. And I had to keep Hunk from eating it all!”

Keith snorted softly and took the spork that was on the edge of the plate and started eating. The eggs had a strange taste to them but it was definitely still eggs, the same could be said about the meat as well. Despite the strange coloring, they still tasted like the meat products from Earth. It wasn’t long before he’d eaten everything on the plate and had stopped just short of licking it clean, giving Lance a look as though to ask if there was anymore.

“I think if we head to the kitchen, we might be able to snag some more. If Pidge hasn’t hoarded it and Hunk hasn’t taken the leftovers.” Lance smirked at the look on Keith’s face. “Huh, you didn’t turn purple over night, that’s pretty new. Guess our training last night paid off a little.”

Keith sat a little straighter at this, looking down at himself for the first time since he was so rudely woken up. Lance was right, he looked normal.. Or whatever normal was for him these days. A sort of relief went through him at this, the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to stay in his room for another hour taking a weight from his chest. He’d be able to go and have a normal breakfast with the rest of the team.

With a bit of tidying up, Keith soon found himself trailing along behind Lance to the kitchen, just barely listening as the Cuban boy prattled on about something he’d done on one of their last missions or another. The team greeted them as they entered, Pidge making some comment about Keith actually leaving his cave to have breakfast on time with them.

“I know where you stash your treats, Pidge.” Keith drawled as he sat down, raising a brow at the green paladin. Pidge shut their mouth and scowled at him before muttering something about moving the snack stash.

Keith would just ask the mice later where it was moved to; Pidge kept a lot of really good comfort foods hidden in the vents around the castle sometimes.

Team training after that went well, though Keith had his reservations even as he teamed with Lance to take on a gladiator and Hunk and Pidge. Lance made eye contact with him at some point and nodded, a silent promise for more one on one training later that day, for which Keith was thankful.

“Good job today, I feel like we’re starting to find our rhythm again.” Shiro praised them as they relaxed, his eyes going directly to Keith as he spoke. A knot of guilt immediately settled in Keith’s chest, eyes falling so he didn’t have to look his brother in the face. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was keeping so much from Shiro and the other put so much trust in him, had so much pride for Keith today…

“Lance, come on.” He tapped Lance’s shoulder, needing a distraction, an outlet. He could feel the oncoming change and he needed to stop it before it got out of control. Lance seemed to understand this, as his playful smile fell away and he nodded, standing immediately before turning to address the others. 

“If anyone needs my charming self, I’ll be training with Keith! He promised to show me this new take down move that he used in one of our missions, I’ve been dying to try it.” It wasn’t a complete lie, he really did want to learn something from Keith. 

Everyone seemed to accept this though Hunk had a look on his face, one that Keith had seen before but had yet to decipher, though it was gone before he could really think about it, replaced by a lopsided grin. Keith could still see the lingering suspicion even as he turned to follow Lance out, letting out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. One look at Lance’s face though made his own expression sour.

“Why the hell are you looking so smug?” Keith really, really wanted to punch him, but he supposed he would have his chance as soon as they got to the training deck.

“Me? Smug? Never~” Lance practically sang the words, skipping ahead to avoid Keith when the other moved to either punch or shove him. Probably both. “We both know you wouldn’t have come up with as awesome a lie as me.”

“Keep your voice down.” Keith immediately snapped at him, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was following or listening. The last thing he needed was for one of the others to think he and Lance were plotting things… or fucking, as he’d come to find out. Pidge apparently had it in their head that he and Lance were an item and went off together to have ‘private time’, which was apparently why Keith refused to come out of his room sometimes. It was utterly ridiculous! Him and Lance? As fucking if. At most, he thought of Lance as a particularly annoying friend. 

“Keith, no one is going to find out, cool it.” Lance huffed as they got into the room, immediately turning to lock it down. “We’ll do the same thing as last time, if that’s okay with your royal Highness?” 

Keith held no mercy for Lance that day, but then Lance gave it back just as hard, or as hard as he could manage against a fairly peeved half Galra.

He berated Lance the entire time he helped him down to the medical pods, twisting his head to look over his shoulder with narrowed eyes at one point as he helped Lance to step inside.

“What’s up?” Lance grunted out, squinting to try and see whatever Keith was looking at.

“Its nothing, I just thought I heard someone,” He muttered, feeling jittery now. “Get in the stupid pod, Lance.”

“Yes, sir, right away, sir.” Lance mocked, laughing up until Keith shoved his injured shoulder very purposely. The taller of the two gave a little salute, giving Keith a bit of cheek even as the pod closed, leaving Keith in blissful and unnerving silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter co-written with my lovely, lovely bae blu3t3amrul3s from tumblr <3 Also, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! An update just in time!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Happy 2017 everyone! I'm sorry for the long wait! Sadly, this sort of trend may continue as I have signed up for the voltron big bang and will be working on that the next few months plus classes start back up on Tuesday! Sorry for the trouble! Anyway, enjoy this long ass chapter! Also, blu3t3amrul3s is my beautiful muse who helps me out and pretty much now co-authors this fic!
> 
> Solo respira- just breathe

“I think we’re finally getting this training thing down.” Lance stretched his arms as far above his head as he could until he heard a satisfying pop. He groaned as he let his arms fall to his sides. He then twisted onto his side to look at Keith, the red paladin currently doing his own stretches to work out any soreness from the prior night. “You’re definitely improving. Well, getting the hang of holding back your punches and controlling your strength.” Keith grunted in response, head a little clouded with worry. Something didn’t feel right about tonight.

He was so distracted, he didn’t even notice Lance was moving until he went to shift positions and nearly knocked heads with him. Lance staggered backwards and Keith shot straight up, face flushed and already going purple. Lance looked at him for a moment not saying anything. Keith could feel cold sweat trickle down his spine he was so sure he messed up because he let his paranoia get the better of him. Then, Lance laughed. It was breathless and short but the sound made Keith’s face flush darker and he was sure he was in purple space furry mode.

“What’s got you so out of it, dude?” Lance sat himself down in front of Keith, watching as the now purple teen went back to his stretches.

“Something just feels off,” Keith sighed. “Like.. something bad is waiting to happen.”

“You’re worrying too much, Keith, nothing bad is going to happen.” Lance started to copy Keith, stretching his long legs out and moving to touch his toes. Keith gave him a withering look but simply rolled his eyes and started doing his cool down routine. Lance just grinned, winked, and continued, showing off a bit of his own flexibility while he was at it. It was pretty hard to tell when Keith was blushing when he was purple and furry, which was off-putting to Lance, but he was determined to figure out the Galra’s tells.

Lance looked over to Keith, trying to guess what he could do to get the guy to blush or react some other way. A grin worked it’s way over his face then, a wicked thought coming to the forefront of his mind. He was gonna have a lot of fun with this. As Keith finished up his stretches he turned to face Lance but almost choked on his own spit. Lance was currently in a very… bendy position. He looked pretty much like a human pretzel, ankles locked behind his head, arms between them to balance himself so that he didn’t fall forward onto his face.

Lance loved this weird position, even though it didn’t really do much except display how flexible he was, and freak certain people out.

Keith’s face was burning, if he were human at the moment he’s sure he’d be bright red to the tips of his ears. Lance had no right being that flexible and he had no right to look that good doing it. Why was he even doing that?

“You should see your dumb purple face right now!” Lance cackled, the motion of it making his body rock and tip back dangerously. That seemed to be the wrong move as the moment he started laughing, Keith reached out with his foot and shoved, sending Lance onto his back with a yelp of pain. Lance groaned as Keith tried to calm himself down. Stupid Lance and his dumb cute laughter and flexibility. Lance huffed at him and untangled himself to stand up.

“Rude.” He dusted himself off as Keith shot him a glare. “Already bruising me and we haven’t started actual training. Tsk tsk, Keithy boy.” Keith simply continued to glare at him, the heat from it so intense that Lance was sure he was trying to burn holes in his face. “Well come on, I’m pretty sure everyone’s asleep so we can head to the training deck.” Lance stretched again and moved to grab his jacket, listening as Keith let out a noise that sounded like it was between a growl and a groan. “Who care’s if you’re currently purple and fuzzy? No one else is going to see you.”

Keith, even with all rationality telling him otherwise, highly doubted that.

Even so, he got himself together and grabbed his cloak for good measure, the two of them heading out and to the training deck. For the most part, they went undetected, Keith’s worry easing the closer they got.

Of course, things never, ever went as planned.

“Ah! I was hoping to catch the two of you!”

The two paladins jumped, Lance quickly moving to put himself between Keith and Coran who was moving towards them at a very brisk pace. He had a smile on his face, but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary these days, but the tenseness in how he moved was new to them.

“In you go, let’s hurry now boys!” Coran ushered the two into the training room, seeming to not notice Keith’s current state of being. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you two for quite some time! Well, actually to Keith but it’s lucky I got both of you in one go.”

Keith felt like throwing up. Lance was trying to come up with anyway to get them out of this. But it seemed Coran was determined to keep them put, intent on talking about whatever it was he needed to talk about.

“Coran, I-we can explain-” Lance started to stammer out, keeping Keith partly behind him.

“No need, it’s very obvious what’s going on here.” Coran held up a hand to stop whatever excuses were about to be vomited up from Lance’s mouth. Keith was panicking, breaths coming fast and shallow, heart slamming into his chest. It was obvious to Lance that Keith was going to end up needing another round of impromptu therapy with the way his pulse pumped against him as he tried to hold Keith close to his back. He could feel drops of sweat slide down his temple as the pressure of the situation crushed him. “It’s obvious that.. The two of you have been trying to hide your love affair!”

What.

A… love affair?

Keith and Lance were blushing, sputtering messes as they launched into an explanation of just why Coran’s deduction was completely and utterly incorrect. The Altean advisor laughed, a deep hearty laugh, that left the boys confused and mouths gaping as they stared at Coran in confusion. The Altean hasn’t had such a good laugh in a while, wiping a tear from his eye as he settled down and straightened up. His hands clasped behind his back as he smiled and looked down at the two boys.

“But in all seriousness, I know about Keith’s Galran ancestry. No worries boys! I happen to be quite knowledgeable in Galran biology and the such so if you ever need help I am more than willing to lend a hand. And I will be right by your sides tomorrow when we tell the rest of the team of this news!”

The thud that Keith made when he fell over was a lot more muted than Lance thought it’d be. That fur must be pretty damn thick. Lance looked down for a second, completely numb to everything that was happening until it hit him all at once like a bag of bricks to the face.

“CORAN NO!” He slapped a hand to his mouth after he yelled, which seemed to startle the older alien trying to retrieve the fainted one. He was looking at Lance with shock and Lance swallowed the large lump in his throat and collected his thoughts as best he could. “I mean…”

Lance sighed. “Coran we can’t tell the others. Not yet at least. Keith is really… Unsure about all of this and honestly I think it’d be better if we waited and/or told the others one at a time?...” He was normally a lot better with words than this.

“My dear boy, what are you saying? That we keep his Galran half a secret?” Coran didn’t like where this was going.

“Coran, that’s _exactly_ what I’m saying.” Lance let out a small huff, moving to kneel down and help move Keith to lean against the wall. “This is so new to him and yeah, he’s pretty scared out of his wits and I totally understand that but it’s imperative that it’s kept secret for the time being. He’s not… he’s not ready for the others to know. I found out by accident and I’ve kept it to myself since then. If I were in Keith’s place, I’d want to flaunt it around but that’s me. Since it’s Keith, he wants to do it in his own time. Test the waters I guess.”

Coran seemed to struggle with the concept for a moment but in the end, he gave a solemn nod.

“I understand,” In that moment Coran prayed to every deity listening that this doesn’t end up driving them apart. It couldn’t happen. Not again. “But I’ll give you this warning now, Lance: keeping this to yourselves for too long can create a great rift with the rest of the team. Do not allow it to get that far.”

Lance rarely saw Coran this serious or grim outside of missions and battles and suddenly he was less sure about this than he has ever been about something. Keith groaned softly on the floor and it made Lance realized he was still passed out. The blue paladin scrambled to help up his friend.

Keith rubbed at the side of his face as consciousness finally returned to him. It didn’t hurt much when he fell over but damn if it wasn’t embarrassing that he literally just fainted. He was almost certain he’d never live it down. One glance at Lance’s face told him that he’d probably never hear about this incident again though.

“What?” Keith’s brow furrowed as he looked at the concern on Lance’s face.

“You good there man?” He sounded off.

“As fine as I’ll ever be.” The fuzzy paladin shrugged.

“Good. But do me a favor and don’t faint like that again. You had me worried.” He winked a bit, grunting when Keith shoved at his shoulder in what could be taken as ‘weak’ in his current form.

Coran watched the two boys, worry in his eyes as the scene dredged up bitter memories from the back of his mind. He really did hope that his fears never come to light.

“Since we’re cleared that up, I’ll leave the two of you to your training! Or, whatever it is you do while you’re in here. No shame in bonding intimately, none at all. In fact, many paladin’s before you have-”

“Coran, it is not and will never be anything past friendship.” Both Lance and Keith cut in, the two of them blushing hotly from the mere implications of what the other was saying.

Coran gave them a curious look, shrugged, and turned to leave, whistling a merry tune as he went.

“Ugh god, that was not how I expected that to go.” Lance scrubbed his hands over his face, looking over at Keith with a tired look. The Galra looked no worse for wear, his face drawn and yellow eyes haunted. His lips were pursed tightly as he absently picked at a spot on his pants, seeming to be lost in thoughts. “You still wanna train or…?”

“Huh? Yeah… yeah let’s get this over with.”

Training was a mess that night, the two of them far too distracted from the confrontation with Coran to truly focus on what they wanted or needed to do. Keith wound up with a few scrapes and cuts and Lance came out with fewer bruises than he could ever remember getting during a training session with Keith. They both agreed to talk about it in the morning after healing themselves up. Tonight’s session was a dud so here’s to hoping tomorrow’s will be better.

~x~x~x~

“We’re going to be doing a mind meld exercise this morning!” Coran announced to the paladins, far too cheery for basically having woken up. Did he even sleep? Pidge was pretty set on the idea that Coran was some sort of machine that didn’t need sleep. Lance would’ve agreed with them if the ‘kitchen incident’ never occurred.

When that was announced, Keith went very still, heart skipping a few beats. No, no no no no no. This was not a good idea, this was very terrible in fact. He could not handle the other’s being in his head right now, not with everything that was going on with his body and emotions and thoughts. Lance nudged him with his elbow, eyes portraying the thought in his mind: “are you okay?” Keith simply nodded as he swallowed thickly, trying to steady his heart rate and calm his racing thoughts as they grabbed their headsets. Keith could only hear his heart pounding in his ears as he placed it on his head, barely able to hear the instructions that Allura was currently giving.

“This is more a game than a trust exercise,” She was saying. “The name of the game is Ragnian. You each have to build a tower with your minds and make that tower fit in with the others to form a castle. Understand that the towers cannot be more than six units high. They can be in any shape you desire but the ultimate goal is to be able to comfortably fit each of your unique parts together to form one whole.”

“Kinda like Tetris!” Hunk blurted out, getting looks of confusion and amusement from the rest of the team. Lance grinned and nudged his buddy.

“Yeah, it is like tetris! Only multiplayer!” Hunk beamed at Lance’s addition. Lately it seemed like he’s been spending less and less time around the blue paladin. It was really wearing down on him. Made him feel like they were drifting apart and it cuts deep to think that. But then Lance goes and does this; casually rolling along with his ideas and jokes like nothing was changing. Like his best friend wasn’t in a possibly steamy love affair with their fellow teammate and new friend.

Man, sometimes Hunk feels like he’s in the middle of a weird, space themed telenovela.

“Whatever Tetris is, I can assure you that this is far different,” Coran put his hands on his hips before reaching up to twirl his mustache; it was a sure sign he was about to launch into another explanation.

“Let’s just let them get to the exercise.” Allura saved them all as she placed a hand on Coran’s shoulder, stopping him from whatever he was about to say.

It was a struggle, to say the least, to get everyone on the same page and create a tower with the correct amount of blocks and to maintain that number while trying to place their pieces together. Keith had the hardest time keeping the image together, his thoughts too scattered and frantic to completely focus on the task at hand. Thankfully, none of the others seemed to notice, too busy struggling with their own towers for the time being. He was thankful for it, almost, but he also knew it was only a matter of time before someone looked up and realized Keith wasn’t focused on a tower.

Hunk had almost gotten his tower together. All blocky and built mainly from the memories of castle towers he’d seen in old Disney films and storybooks. The yellow paladin floated his piece of the tower over to the center where Pidge waited with hers. He cracked one eye open to see the right leg of Voltron only to notice Keith next to them, struggling to so much as get the image to stay still and not faze out. He frowned at this, his own tower collapsing with the loss of his concentration. Keith was never one to have this much trouble with something, especially a simple exercise like this; the guy might have been all instinct and gung ho but he rarely ever had lapses in concentration quite like this. With a dubious look in Keith’s direction, Hunk went back to his own tower, closing his eyes in order to focus once more.

Keith had to break from the game more than once, heart racing, breath coming fast as he clenched and unclenched his fists against his thighs. Shiro stood, taking his headgear off and walking over to Keith.

“Keith, is ever-” The red paladin stood up abruptly after throwing his gear to the ground and stomped out of the room, his face redder than his suit. Everyone was stunned silent for a moment before chaos erupted.

“What the fuck was that?!”

“Pidge, language!”

“What the heck is eating him so badly? He was having a really hard time focusing.”

“I’ll go check on him.”

Coran stood to the side and chewing his lip as Lance walked out of the room to follow Keith. Pidge looked furious, Hunk was obviously confused and worried and Shiro looked so… Heartbroken. He didn’t dare check to see the princess’ reaction but he knew it couldn’t be anything short of frustration and disappointment in the team.

A cold sweat and the same feeling from last night washed over him.

It was happening again. That feeling of losing control, his body changing without him wanting it to and he couldn’t take it.

_Not now. Oh god not now, this is not the time. I can’t let them know yet. I can’t-_

Keith jolted when Lance laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezing in silent comfort. Blue met violet and Lance wordlessly started going through the calming breathing exercise with him.

“Solo respira, Keith.” Lance murmured, rubbing the red paladin’s back softly, breathing deeply with him to get him into the motion of it. “It’s just a simple game, you’ve got this. Just focus on blocks, think of it as like.. Jenga or some bullshit like that. You want me to sit next to you? Would that make you feel better?” He was teasing, he couldn’t help himself, it was his go to in tense situations like this.

“... Maybe?” Lance’s face went blank at that. He’d been teasing, he hadn’t actually expected Keith to take his offer seriously but now he’d been thrown for a loop and had no actual answer for Keith. Lance had to look away for a moment, cheeks tinted pink from surprise and a bit of shame from how desperate the look in Keith’s eyes was. He slowly breathed out and looked at Keith with a soft smile.

Lance held a hand to him. “Then come on. Let’s go and try this again.”

Keith took that hand and nodded, drawing himself up tall and proud once more. The two reentered the room and were surprised to see that within their short time outside, it dwindled down to just Coran and Shiro. Shiro looked over his shoulder at Keith and looked as if he desperately wanted to say something. Their leader just shrunk back and patted Coran’s shoulder, nodding at him in thanks and making his way out of the room.

Keith tried not to think about the pained look on Shiro’s face as he passed the two paladins.

Lance walked up to Coran and looked about the room before setting his gaze on the older Altean. “What happened? Where’d everyone go?”

“Pidge wanted to make more modifications to the Green lion,” He began. “And Hunk claimed to be hungry. The princess wanted to do some strategy planning and planet mapping. So I’m sad to say that training for the time being is over.”

“Oh, well cool. I guess that means I can kick back with some space juice and relax. Hear that, Keith? Freedom!”

“Huh? Yeah..” Keith pivoted on his heel after that, quickly marching out of the room. The weight of the knowledge that he’d probably caused this was weighing on his chest heavily, making it hard for him to breathe properly.

Lance wanted to follow but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Remember what I said, Lance. I think you need to convince Keith it’s time to give up this charade.”

Lance just gulped and stumbled when Coran let him go. He quickly sprinted out of the room and caught up with the red paladin. Coran’s words weighed him down and he just knows that any more stress and he’s gonna start breaking out like crazy.

And he doesn’t have his stress acne cream handy, either.

Being in space sucked.

~x~x~x~

“Seriously? You’re going to do this barefoot today?” Lance wrinkled his nose at the sight of Keith’s purple, clawed feet. That was just so gross to Lance. Who knows what sort of bacteria was living on the floor! Was there even bacteria in space? He’d have to ask Coran about it at some point, but still!

“Look, my feet have been killing me, I think I need to stretch my boots a bit when I switch to this form.” Keith scowled at him, examining his claws for a moment before turning his yellow eyes on Lance. “Why? Do feet gross you out or something?”

“Just yours,” Lance shot back with a smirk. “Always knew you had gross, smelly feet~”

“I’m going to kick your ass.” Keith deadpanned, bayard in hand in the next moment. Lance just laughed as he lifted his hand and curled his fingers in a come hither motion, cocky grin firmly in place.

“I’d like to see you try, mullet.”

Training was progressing well, Lance and Keith nearly matched for the first time in months since they’d started on this weird training regime. If anything, they were having fun with it now, using it as a chance to make fun and taunt one another, try to push the other past what they were doing. It was almost lazy, really.

“Holy fuck!”

Keith froze, ears flat on his skull before he let out a yelp, stumbling forward, the ground rushing up to meet his face as he fell. Lance, who’d been about to kick him, ended up swinging his leg too high as he tried to compensate for his opponent suddenly falling and wound up flat on his back, air leaving his lungs in a rush as he did, vision swimming as he cracked his head on the floor. It would have been funny if the two of them weren’t currently panicking the moment they recovered enough to realize that Hunk had interrupted them.

This was not good.

“Hunk, amigo, friend, palhoncho, brother from another mother, I can totally explain.” Lance was the first one to get up from the floor, moving none too subtly to put himself between Hunk and Keith, the latter of the two currently frozen in terror. “Keith here-”

“ _He’s so fucking fuzzy!_ ”

That was the very last thing either of them expected to come out of Hunk’s mouth.

Keith was so shocked that he hardly moved when Hunk hustled over and began to very delicately touch his arms and ears, staring blankly at the wall ahead of him as the yellow paladin basically dotted and fawned over him. Once he regained his wits however, he quickly swatted at Hunk’s hands and covered his ears to avoid having them basically molested again.

“Your first reaction to seeing Keith as a purple people eater is to shout about how fuzzy he is!” Lance was wheezing, doubled over as he slapped his knee. “Oh my god I should have totally expected that.”

“I mean, it’s still Keith,” Hunk shrugged, reaching out with a grin to poke at Keith’s cheek, laughing when the Galra snapped at his finger with fangs bared. “Doesn’t matter if he’s purple or not, he’s still a paladin and he’s still my friend. So this is what you guys have been doing? I’m kind of offended you didn’t trust me enough to let me in on the secret.” He thought for a moment. “Better than accidentally walking in on you two making out or worse.”

This made both of them choke, Lance cackling and howling with more laughter after a few seconds. It earned a very feline hiss from Keith, the Galra currently squinting with ears drawn back and lips pulled tight across his fangs.

“Holy… He reminds me of your cat back home, Lance.”

“Doesn’t he?!” Lance collapsed into another fit of laughter. Keith reached out and smacked him, adding his claws for added effect, not at all amused at being compared to a common house cat.

Hunk was grinning and happily examining Keith’s body, pausing when he squatted down by his legs and peered down at his feet curiously.

“Toe beans,” He whispered in awe. “You have toe beans.” Hunk reached out and poked the biggest pad, letting out a happy noise at how soft it was. “Lance! Galra have toe beans!”

Lance’s head shot up at this, a look on his face that Keith had never seen before. He knew better than to stay still though and jumped up just as Lance launched himself at Keith’s legs, earning a screech from the Cuban.

“Let me squish your beans!”

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. I've been coerced into this and there is no backing out now. Be gentle please.


End file.
